Official Super Bowl XLV Thread

I was distracted downloading videos from YouTube.

 

If we're ranking on 2010 season alone my list would go:

Brady
Rodgers
Vick
Rivers
Ryan
P. Manning
Roethlisberger
Brees
Cassell
Sanchez

 

No, that's not it. You seem to have come to that conclusion but I have never said that. IJR said it perfectly. I don't have a high opinion of a QB that dinks and dunks and throws screens where the receiver makes the most out of the play.

I think very highly of the way Ben Roethlisberger plays the position of QB.

 

Steelers C Pouncey out for Super Bowl

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)DALLAS (AP) Maurkice Pouncey is sidelined for the Super Bowl.

The Pittsburgh Steelers center has a high left ankle sprain that has kept him out of practice since he was injured nearly two weeks ago in the AFC championship game. Now, the rookie Pro Bowl selection will miss the big game against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday.

"He's out," Steelers coach Mike Tomlin told a pool reporter Friday after the team completed its final full practice indoors at TCU.

Backup Doug Legursky will play in his place in what will be his first NFL start as a center. Signed as an undrafted free agent out of Marshall in 2008, Legursky started four games at guard earlier this season.

"The NFL is made up of lots of players like him: guys who somehow got an opportunity and seized it," Tomlin said. "We're completely confident that he will seize this opportunity and play well. That's why we're not changing what we do."

Pouncey needed crutches and wore a walking boot on his left foot as he got off the team plane in Dallas on Monday, but didn't need either during the players' final media session Thursday. Tomlin said earlier Friday that the rookie Pro Bowl selection would not play if he could not participate in the team's last practice.

Defensive end Aaron Smith also is out. He's been sidelined since Oct. 24 with a torn triceps muscle and has been limited in practice.

The Packers' main concern is outside linebacker Erik Walden, who was listed as questionable with an ankle injury.

Wide receiver Donald Driver tweaked his quadriceps this week and has been limited in practice, but Packers coach Mike McCarthy said earlier Friday that Driver is expected to play. He is listed as probable.

Meanwhile, the Steelers practiced with crowd noise piped in for the first time this week.

"We've had a very good practice week, very normal," Tomlin said. "We're lucky to have guys who just love football and love one another. It's a special group."

 

Storm turns some Super Bowl plans into Super Mess

(AP Photo/Doug McCracken)By SCHUYLER DIXON

Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) Runways too snowy to receive airliners packed with football fans. Sidewalks too icy for cowboy boots. Temperatures too cold to distinguish Dallas from Pittsburgh or Green Bay.

Just two days before the Super Bowl, a fresh blast of snow and ice canceled hundreds of flights, transformed highways into ribbons of white and caused dangerous sheets of ice to fall from Cowboys Stadium, sending at least six people to the hospital. It was enough to turn the biggest week in American sports into a Super Mess.

The six people hurt Friday were private contractors who had been hired by the NFL to prepare the stadium for the game. One man was hit in the head, another in the shoulder. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.

Most stadium entrances were closed as a precaution. Officials raised the temperature inside the arena in an attempt to melt remaining ice.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area received as much as 5 inches of snow overnight - nearly twice its annual average - and by Friday morning downtown Dallas hotels were selling ski hats and scarves alongside cowboy hats. A winter storm warning was issued for suburban Arlington, home of the $1.3 billion stadium where the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers are to play Sunday.

"It looks like, `Oh, no, I'm back in Canada,'" said Sammy Sandu, a 32-year-old property developer from Kelowna, British Columbia. "It's just pouring down snow. Are we still at home, or have we left? We didn't drink that much last night, did we?"

Forecasters expected game day to be mostly sunny, with highs in the 40s, which would probably not be warm enough to melt all the snow and ice.

Sandu made it to Dallas with his father Thursday, but other members of their party weren't so lucky. His brother still hoped to arrive from Miami in time for the game, but a friend abandoned the trip after a flight from Vancouver was canceled.

Like much of the region, airlines were struggling to recover from a massive blizzard earlier in the week that brought up to 2 feet of snow and bitter cold temperatures to as much as half the nation.

More than 300 arriving flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, a hub for American Airlines. The city's smaller airport, Love Field, was closed before dawn because of snow on the runways, but it reopened by noon. Love is home to Southwest Airlines.

Andy Williams, a 51-year-old attorney from Grafton, Wis., said he was frustrated to find his American flight from Milwaukee delayed for about five hours. He was already planning ahead for the worst-case scenario.

"If this flight gets canceled, I'll start driving down tonight," he said. "Clearly it's not my first choice but, at least you're in control of your own destiny at that point."

But the chilly temperatures were not expected to faze the teams competing in the real event, nor their hardy fans, who are used to cooler climes. The temperature in Dallas on Friday stood at 20 - the same as Pittsburgh. Green Bay was slightly colder at 17.

"We deal with it very well back home," Steelers fan Alex Sax said on his way the NFL Experience fan festival in Dallas. "Here, they don't know how to deal with it. There's no plows. No salt trucks. When we drove from airport, we were the only car on the road."

Asked if the weather could affect future Super Bowl bids, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the conditions this year have been exceptional.

"We've had a winter to remember. Some would say to forget," Goodell said. "It's going to be a great weekend for us, and the weather's getting better."

The Super Bowl is scheduled to be played in Indianapolis next year and in the open-air New Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey in 2014.

Some Packers fans at Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee found themselves delayed but not completely downhearted.

James Jennings, 78, was scheduled to fly out of Milwaukee with his 44-year-old son. They were taking a charter flight as part of a package for which they paid a total of $25,000.

Jennings, a criminal lawyer from Norridge, Ill., said he had absolutely no doubt that the flight would leave as scheduled.

"At $12,500 a ticket, are you kidding me? They'd get Evel Knievel to fly that thing."

Elsewhere Friday, the bitter cold seeped into the South, where icy roads were blamed for several traffic deaths in Louisiana and Mississippi. The system extended its grip as far east as North Carolina, where freezing rain was possible.

The frigid weather also disrupted natural gas service in New Mexico and caused water pipes to burst in Arizona. Snow- and slush-covered roads made driving hazardous across Texas and neighboring states.

Greyhound spokeswoman Bonnie Bastian says the weather snarled travel through Texas, Oklahoma and parts of Arkansas and Tennessee.

By late Friday morning, 23-year-old Katrina Smith had been waiting in the Kansas City terminal for more than 30 hours. She was supposed to be in the city just 15 minutes to transfer buses as she headed from Denver to Tulsa, Okla.

"Everyone here is going to go crazy," she said.

Back in Dallas, organizers of at least one celebrity-filled Super Bowl event planned to host their Saturday celebrations inside.

DirecTV planned to host a "Celebrity Beach Bowl" in a heated tent, with a lineup of stars and athletes including Josh Duhamel, Alex Rodriguez, Chace Crawford and Hayden Panettierre.

"We're full speed ahead," said Jon Gieselman, the company's senior vice president of advertising and public relation. "The show will go on. We were prepared for something like this."

Associated Press writers Danny Robbins, Linda Stewart Ball, Jamie Stengle and Paul Newberry in Dallas; Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee; and videographer Rich Matthews in Arlington, Texas, contributed to this report.

Updated February 5, 2011